


Leverage

by Lady Divine Coldflash (fhartz91)



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Blackmail, Crushes, Ficlet, Humor, Lisa helping her brother out, M/M, some bad puns, sort of Glee crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-03
Updated: 2016-03-03
Packaged: 2018-05-24 12:01:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6153027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fhartz91/pseuds/Lady%20Divine%20Coldflash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While surfing the Internet, Lisa Snart finds something that she’s sure her brother can use to his advantage. It’s nothing tremendously earth shattering, but it might be enough to blackmail Barry Allen into giving him something he wants.</p><p>Plays with the crossover idea of Barry Allen being a Warbler instead of Sebastian (Glee), and either Len or Lisa stumbling across videos of the show choir on YouTube. Also includes my own personal head canon that Barry asked Felicity to remove those videos the minute they met xD Also, I don’t know why Lisa’s so good with computers in this (she’s not Felicity level good, but she’s good). Just go with it <3</p>
            </blockquote>





	Leverage

“Len. Len, come here.” Lisa giggles, rapidly drumming her fingers on the table in her excitement. She waits a moment longer for her brother to respond, then stares pointedly at him over her shoulder when he doesn’t. “Len, stop playing with your gun and come look at this.”

Len doesn’t remove his eyes from his weapon, which he’s been tinkering with, to humor his sister, who’s been attached to her computer screen for the last hour.

“Lisa,” he says in his condescending _older brother knows better_ tone, “can’t you find something more productive to do with your time than watch CinemaSins?”

“But Len…”

“I’m not really interested in _Everything Wrong with Mean Girls in Ten Minutes_ _or Less_.”

“They haven’t done that one yet,” she points out. “Would you just come and take a look at this? I think I’ve found a video you’d actually be interested in.”

Len huffs. “I doubt it.”

Lisa shakes her head. How her brother can be so damn stubborn sometimes is beyond her.

“Remember that _thing_ you mentioned wanting,” Lisa says, being vague on purpose to toy with him, “from a certain superhero who goes by the name of _The Flash_?”

Len raises an interested eyebrow, but keeps his eyes glued to his gun.

“Maybe,” he says. He knows what she’s referring to without her having to say it outright. It’s something he never meant to mention, but he was upset at the time, maybe a little drunk, and it slipped out…along with the truth behind _The Flash’s_ secret identity. But he doesn’t see that as breaking the deal he has with Barry. Lisa was the only one who heard, and he trusts her silence more than anyone’s. “Why?”

“Because I think I found something that might help you get it.”

Len gets up from his chair and holsters his gun, walking across the room to the dining room table Lisa appropriates for her laptop. He leans over her, hands pressed to the table top, as he watches the video on the screen.

“This isn’t YouTube,” he says.

“Duh,” Lisa says.

“Where did you find this?”

“Some server I stumbled into.” She shrugs. “Third party. Encrypted, but not all that well.”

Len smirks. Then he laughs.

“Are…are you serious?” he says, restarting the video. “Is that really Barry Allen?”

“The one and only,” Lisa proclaims with a smug grin, so much like her brother’s.

“What is he even doing?”

“I think it’s called _dancing_ ,” Lisa ribs.

“I don’t know what I love more about this,” Len says, skipping to a particularly interesting segment, with Barry front and center, doing some move that’s basically him jerking his hips, “the outfit or the moves.” Len watches a few seconds in before he makes a determination. “As far as uniforms are concerned, he’s definitely stepped up in the world.”

“I don’t know,” Lisa says, licking her lips, “there’s just something about those prep school uniforms…”

Len turns his face to her and shoots her a questioning look.

She throws up her hands. “I’m just saying.”

“Okay,” Len says, giving her that, “but if _you_ can access this, how do you know it’ll even help me? I mean, hasn’t everyone and their grandmother seen it by now?”

“Not _this_ video,” she explains. “This isn’t a public server, and from the date stamp, it looks like a recent upload. I tried to find other videos, because there has to be more, right? But someone has gone to great lengths to eliminate every single other video and picture of him in this group.” Lisa proceeds to show Len her lengthy browser history, every link she clicked that went nowhere, every picture that had been erased, the descriptions there but the images, even the thumbnails, obliterated. “Whoever did this did a frickin’ good job. I mean, it’s literally impossible to take something off the Internet, but” – She gestures to her laptop – “they did it.”

“And Barry Allen happens to have the kind of friends that can do that,” Len says. He claps a hand on his sister’s shoulder. “You done good. This isn’t going to get me the Hope Diamond or anything, but it might be enough to get me what I want.”

Lisa ejects the flash drive from her computer and hands it over.

“Good luck,” she says, giving him a wink.

“Thanks.” He plucks the drive from her hand and slips it into his pocket. He chuckles once thinking about it. What an odd insurance policy for what he has in mind.

“Anytime,” she says, turning to her computer and switching back to YouTube.

***

Barry feels his phone vibrate in his pocket and he gets a bad feeling. Maybe it’s because it’s been quiet all day – no alarms, nothing noteworthy on the police scanners, no meta sightings. This call, coming so close to him considering heading home for the day after not hearing a peep from anyone can only mean that, whoever it is, is going to break that streak.

And at seven o’clock in the evening. _Damn_.

He answers without checking the number first, in the hopes that it’ll just be Iris asking him if he wants to join her and Eddie for dinner, or Felicity letting him know that she’s coming in to town.

“Hello.”

“Hey, Allen.”

Barry drops his head in his hand. Why does he always have to be right about stuff like this?

“Why do you have this number?”

“I find it necessary to have direct access to all my… _assets_.”

Barry knows exactly what _asset_ he’s referring to, and it makes his skin crawl. Barry never thought of his secret identity as an asset, or a bargaining token. That’ll teach him to take it for granted.

“What is it, Snart?” Barry asks. He raises a hand to the back of his neck, meaning to massage tightening muscles, but it vibrates to the point of giving him a friction burn. “I don’t really have the time for your scintillating conversation right now.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Len says. “You might have time for this.”

“Yeah?” Barry says, unimpressed. “And what’s that?”

“I have just been made privy to a certain piece of information that I have a feeling you’ve been trying to keep secret.”

“Well, if it’s my obsession with The Dukes of Hazard, you’re too late,” Barry says. “I’ve already come to terms with that.”

“You’re funny,” Len says with an emphatic laugh. “You know, that’s one of the things I like about you. Your sense of humor. Your sparkling personality.”

“Thanks,” Barry says flatly.

“You must have an amazing _stage_ presence,” Len continues, drawing the sentence out, every word landing like a punch.

Barry’s head pops up. The hand on the back of his neck has stopped vibrating and started strangling.

“I…I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Barry says, but he’s never been a very good liar. It doesn’t really matter. The remark was meant to keep him from cursing Snart out in front of Caitlin, who’s sitting mere feet away.

“Oh, you know _exactly_ what I mean,” Len teases. “And from the tremendous lengths you went to have someone eliminate said evidence from the Internet, I would say it’s probably something you’re not entirely proud of for some reason. Though I don’t know. I think you look really snazzy in a blazer and tie. And those moves.” Len whistles. “ _Hot_.”

“Fine,” Barry says, eager to be done with this. “What do you want?”

Len pauses, hoping a little time will make Barry sweat.

“Well, that was easier than I thought it would be,” he chuckles. “You didn’t even put up much of a fight. I’m almost disappointed.”

“I figured I’d just cut past your normal bull and jump to the end,” Barry says. “So, tell me what you want.”

“Ooo, Barry Allen. So forceful.” Len smiles into the phone. “You know what I want.”

Barry gets quiet. He has to think for a moment. There’s a second when he sincerely doesn’t know. But then he remembers – something Len said offhandedly during one of their less climatic confrontations, and Barry almost laughs.

“Wait, you were serious about that?”

“As a heart attack,” Len says.

“You’ve gotta stop doing that,” Barry says, “with the old school comebacks. You’re only aging yourself.”

“You know the place,” Len says, unfazed. “Meet me there in an hour, or else this video goes viral, starting with Central City’s finest.”

Len hangs up, and Barry sighs.

Great. That’s just great. He couldn’t have one completely quiet day?

The video in question isn’t that big a deal, really. After Barry got his job on the force, the guys seemed to like teasing him, and he didn’t want to give them more ammunition. He knew they didn’t mean anything by it. They were just ragging on him for being Joe West’s kid. But Barry had too many bad memories of being teased in high school. He didn’t need to go through that all over again as an adult. He lucked out in that no one found those videos for a while, but pretty much the day he met Felicity Smoak, he asked her to search them out and pull them down, if she could, as a personal favor.

One must have slipped through the cracks.

But if Felicity couldn’t find it, Barry is really curious how Len had.

More than the teasing, Barry didn’t want his having performed in a show choir destroying his credibility. He never thought it _could_ until last year, when Officer Dubain’s testimony during an extortion trial was deemed questionable after the prosecution made an issue of the fact that he had attended “clown college” for two years before he went to the police academy.

Barry didn’t want to take any chances.

“Hey. That sounded like a heavy sigh,” Caitlin says, walking by Barry on her way to her computer. “What’s wrong?”

“Oh, nothing,” Barry says, checking his watch and noticing that he ate up twenty minutes of his time by sitting in one spot, staring into space like a condemned man. “I just…I have to go.”

He gets up and grabs his coat. Like he said, he’d better get this over with.

“Where are _you_ running off to?”

“I…uh…” – Barry sighs again – “I kind of have a dinner date.”

“Ooo,” Caitlin coos, eager for some juicy gossip on an otherwise dull day, “with who?”

“Trust me,” Barry says, throwing on his coat, “you don’t want to know.”


End file.
